Designing for Civil Society

£14 million for e-innovations

The BECTA newsletter for UK online reports that the government is making £14 million available as match-funding for local authorities to develop innovative e-government projects to explore joined-up working, knowledge-sharing and e-service delivery. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister announced on 16th September details of areas targeted in the first round of "Support for e-Innovations" funding aimed at projects which "look beyond" the 2005 e-government target.

It's about the Value, Stupid

I've been banging on for a while now about the problem of people not seeing valuing in the internet. To me, this may be every bit as big a barrier to including people in the net society as their lack of skills or equipment. After all, when people do perceive significant value in a service, they'll often go along way to to take advantage of it. A clear example is the fact that millions of people pay to be taught how to drive, despite the great expense and lethal risks involved.

Now some new supporting data has come out of an Oxford Internet Institute study. Slide 12 of the presentation shows that, of people who don't use the net in the UK, an amazing 96% consider themselves "Not at all disadvantaged".

If this isn't a wake-up-call to civil society organisations to spend more time demonstrating the value of the net, I don't know what is.

Going to the blogs...what are they good for?

The online magazine spiked ran a seminar at IBM on Wednesday aimed at 'putting the blogging phenomenon in perspective'. James Crabtree, , Brendan O'Neill, Bill Thompson, Perry de Havilland formed the panel to explore... '...are blogs revolutionising journalism, or have people in the traditional media lost faith in their own authority, leading them to talk blogs up? Do blogs enhance democracy, or do they make a virtue of narcissism and navel-gazing? Does a dangerous clique of bloggers wield unaccountable power, or are these bloggers simply exercising their right to free speech on an exciting new platform?'

Voting, e-participation and usability list

UPA-evoting is a new list dedicated to discussion of the use of technology in voting, primarily with a focus on usability, accessibility, security and privacy issues, but with a holistic approach to the subject. Subject matter may include e-participation, but the list specifically excludes issues related to e-government.

List address: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/upa-evoting
For further information about this list, please contact Louise Ferguson: louisiana@acm.org

Steven Clift promotes 'Public net-work' concept

Globe trotting e-democracy guru Steven Clift is promoting "Public net-work" as a concept .... "the strategic use of information and communications technology to better implement established public policy goals and programs through direct and diverse online stakeholder involvement.  From direct citizen volunteer involvement at the local level to enhanced inter-governmental and NGO participation at the national level, "public net-work" is a new concept that redefines the role of government in the information age." News here of an e-conference October 15-29, plus a paper developing the concept.

Participatory Design Conference July 2004

Doug Schuler has posted the first call for papers of the conference to be held in Toronto, Canada, July 27-31 2004

The overall theme of the 2004 conference, "Artful Integration: Interweaving Media, Materials and Practices" describes a central reality of participatory design. It recognizes that an essential ingredient in design practice is the working together of multiple, heterogeneous elements.

Who wants to play a design game?

As Ann Light reports, some of those at the September 8 workshop were interested in playing the technology planning game that I described - download here - or see Making the Net Work for more on games. If you are interested in joining a group to play a first version of the game and participate in further development, please get in touch.

Final discussion - where next?

Tom Steinberg facilitated the final session at the September 8 workshop. He first of all asked us to respond to the challenge "We'd all be better off if we..." We responded with...

1) ... had somewhere trustworthy go for advice.
2) ... could learn effectively and cheaply from each other.
3) ... shaped, rather than were shaped by, the technology we use.
4) ... had a fund for developing socially focussed, scaleable software projects.
5) ... had an intermediary between the techies and the NGOs
6) ... had designers who served the poor
7) ... had a community of practice
8) ... could encourage campaigners to spend some of their time on advertising the value which is already out there.

Position papers and movies

Here are downloads of papers submitted for the workshop, and Quicktime movies taken on the day (player download). Files around 500-600K. Thanks to Daniel J Wilcox for smart editing - they were much larger.

Andrew Ackland - how Dialogue by Design runs large-scale online consultation.
Paper. Movie.
Andy Dearden - sharing experience through a pattern language. Paper. Movie.
Ann Light - communities in Fiankoma, Ghana and Brighton, UK share experiences. Paper. Movie.
Chris Bailey - supporting social movements in Bulgaria. Paper. Movie.
David Casacuberta - e-learning for e-inclusion. Paper.
David Wilcox - workshop games for users to plan systems. Paper. Movie.
David Wortley - the impact of digital technologies on society. Paper. Movie.
Mark Blythe - online shopping for older people. Paper.
Miranda Mowbray - how online and offline organising are linked. Paper. Movie.
Steve Walker - ICT-mediated collaboration among European trade unionists. Paper. Movie.
Wendy Olphert - the potential of interactive digital television. Paper. Movie.
Tom Steinberg - proposal for a Civic Hacking Fund. Paper. Movie.
Nancy White - inspiring story of online and off community building in Armenian Paper.

Mailing list details

Hi all,

I don't know if everybody got the details of the 'social movement informatics' mailing list, which I mentioned at the workshop. If you'd like to join, to help the exchange of news and ideas, it's accessible as social-movement-informatics@jiscmail.ac.uk - you can sign up here http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk.

Steve